John Walking
Stewart once decided to leave London following a
pamphlet he'd written on the subject of a future queen.
If I recall he'd taken a position on the future King of
England's choice of wife and what with one thing and
another his pamphlet had raised a suspicion in the
authorities that Stewart could well have been a
dangerous radical, well worth keeping an eye on. In
those days pamphlet writing was more like an opinion
page in a newspaper or on electronic devices where this
or that pompous ass gets paid or volunteers to interpret
the news of the day for those of us who might be unable
or are unwilling to form an opinion of our own.
Generally in those days pamphleteers had to pay the
costs of printing their pamphlets. Over time the more
recognizable newspapers emerged from bright sparks in
the printing business who had decided to make their
fortune by combining advertizing, pamphleteering and
actual news, all of it wrapped around the more
censorious instincts of the authorities into a source of
constant entertainment as well as a political weapon.

In those
days too, an English King's choice of life mate was more
about Genetics, European Politics and Religion than it
was about glass slippers and swooning. Stewart wasn't
big on the existence of God or monarchies yet he found
it impossible to remain silent on the revelation that a
future king of England had secretly married a Roman
Catholic widow. It was marriage declared legitimate by
the Pope but the line of succession laws for the English
Royals declared that anyone marrying a Catholic couldn't
be king. The marriage was finally declared invalid
because apparently George III, who was by then totally
insane, hadn't given permission. In the end, so that he
could be King, George III's eldest son married a solid,
properly born daughter of a German Duke. If I
recall, after being followed around by agents of the
state, Stewart decided to get out of town, visit Lapland
for a couple of years until the whole thing blew over.